berkeley patenting scheme is about preserving some kind of openess via patenting

Strategies

Bermuda Accords

human genome project; no patenting, other agreements that put everything in the public domain

something doable like that

copyright viral models

BIOS -- australians; made a way to patent a particular way of putting genes into a plant; you can use this patent pool, but anything you create requires you to put the patent back in the pool -- not working (patent-left); lack of participation

clickwrap licensing

PIPRA -- 20 universities published in Science; patents to good ends - "Do no evil" -- goodwill game

pre-emptively generate a preexisting knowledge base before others get in

How have patent challenges held up

public patent foundation is winning lots of these in the biology area; so far in the copyright/patent courts

the worry is about patenting of basic biological function, rather than either specific gene sequences and/or specific uses

USPTO guidelines for gene sequence patenting

Evolving definitions of "use"

Clarify the pharma patenting?

patent the compound always

Rochester case

u of rochester; idea

put together a patent that says that solving a medical problem by tacking the inhibitor site; general idea; not going to tell you how

have to have the specific structure to get the patent: court

Drug companies happy; universities in basic research is unhappy

some patents in or out

inverter stuff -- seems to be basic bio function, so unlikely

zinc fingers? (sorry, I missed this)

Ken's Hierarchy

basic biological function

specific sequence

specific use

Note: Some confusion about a biobrick -- agreement that a biobrick is "a specific sequence for a specific use"

Patents in place?

sequence and receptor; with or without use

Use as a patent distinguisher; allows for extended consideration of protection

Some summary things

goals are what?

incentives to innovate

limiting restriction on fruits of innovation

minimize anticommons; knowledge restriction

incentives to do things for the field; maintaining the health of the field; polarization between the private and the public ideologies; how to avoid (premature) enclosure

IPR may impede progress, rather than promote it

what are the problems that might do this

what can we do about it

what is patentable

what stands up in courts

implications of different standards

workarounds

things to do

biobricks license writing

ken's proposal

strategies to change the definition of patentable?

strategies to clarify what the definitions are?

strategies in the face of given definitions of patentable?

lawyers

is this like biology or is it like electronics? or is it like software? Note: once software gets large enough, we don't really "know" what it does, completely and intimately (otherwise, why regression testing, etc.)

Category 3
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This is a category of challenges we face that I don't feel are widely recognized.
PATENTS: If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. I feel certain that some large company will patent some obvious thing related to interface, object orientation, algorithm, application extension or other crucial technique. If we assume this company has no need of any of our patents then the have a 17-year right to take as much of our profits as they want. The solution to this is patent exchanges with large companies and patenting as much as we can. Amazingly we havn't done any patent exchanges tha I am aware of. Amazingly we havn't found a way to use our licensing position to avoid having our own customers cause patent problems for us. I know these aren't simply problems but they deserve more effort by both Legal and other groups. For example we need to do a patent exchange with HP as part of our new relationship. In many application categories straighforward thinking ahead allows you to come up with patentable ideas. A recent paper from the League for Programming Freedom (available from the Legal department) explains some problems with the way patents are applied to software.